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October 17, 2011

Jay Nixon and the Department of Economic Development were behind the Mamtek deal to bring the supposed sweetener plant to Moberly, MO and create hundreds of jobs. Tens of millions of dollars were promised (and given) to the company, which went belly up before producing anything. They defaulted on a $40 million loan from the town of Moberly.

They were also behind the Wi-Fi Sensors deal, in which a million dollar loan was granted to the company which thereafter promptly went belly up. They defaulted on the million dollar loan.

Rather than modeling Missouri's economic success, the collapse of the two companies has highlighted what some lawmakers fear is a disturbing tendency of the Department of Economic Development to rush through state-aid packages for businesses without properly vetting them.

And it turns out they didn’t stop there.

In another embarrassing example, Nixon traveled to Cape Girardeau in December 2010 to announce incentives for a local health care cooperative — only for it to be revealed in the media a few days later that the project was led by a man on probation for passing more than $90,000 in bad checks.

Nice. Those incentives were, thankfully, cancelled.

But this hat-trick of development nightmares has uncovered the litany of problems with the current economic development system in place at the state level. It’s truly a joke.

"There's no doubt that three separate projects with the same type of lack of oversight or due diligence is a red flag," said Sen. Kurt Schaefer, R-Columbia, a member of a Senate committee that has launched an investigation into Missouri's economic development policies.

A red flag is a good analogy, but may I offer another? An open invitation.

Missouri has now shown that the people in charge are suckers just waiting to be taken by the next pseudo-company or con-man who steps in line. The Dept. of Economic Development is an ATM.

They claim it to be anything but:

Department of Economic Development spokesman John Fougere said each application for state tax incentives is vetted by the agency to ensure it meets program requirements and produces jobs. He said the department is continually adjusting its due-diligence process.

"We take our responsibility of managing and investing taxpayer resources to help create jobs and grow our economy very seriously," Fougere said in an emailed statement.

More empty promises from empty suits.

This series of blunders begs one important question… how many other scammers have hit up the Show-Me State with their “Show me the money!” routine?

October 14, 2011

Remember all the great news a few weeks ago, that Ford would invest $1.1 billion in its assembly plant in Claycomo and add more than 1,000 employees?

It came with a catch, and it’s a big one that may just unravel the whole deal.

Adding a thousand jobs, to produce American cars no less, would be a breath of fresh air to the Kansas City area. Who would be against that?

Ford workers have to approve a new contract with company for this deal - and other expansion plans throughout the United States - to go forward.

But as the New York Times reports, that vote is not going Ford’s way: About 55 percent of the autoworkers who have spoken so far do not support the new contract.

And that could lead to a nationwide strike, as well as kill expansion plans in KC.

As the national and statewide economies continue to take a pounding from the government the last thing we need is for this kind of thing to start happening. We’re all hurting, and if a company feels they are doing well enough to want to expand then expand they should.

October 13, 2011

The fallout from the Mamtek/Moberly disaster of a deal is far from over, and new details are coming together to offer an insight into what went so drastically wrong.

One thing is for certain: this is a ‘hot potato’ issue that has every person involved doing their best to rewrite themselves out of its history, including the current governor, a former governor, and the head of the Department of Economic Development.

To make sure they don’t do that successfully, let’s look at some of their conflicting declarations about the Mamtek plant fiasco.

Recently Governor Nixon, distancing himself, said about the catastrophe:

“I don’t run the Department of Economic Development, and I don’t work the deals at the ground level… As I said before, I work on economic development at a level far above what the day-to-day workings of the Department of Economic Development are.”

“I am pleased that my administration was able to provide a competitive package of strategic economic incentives to help bring [Mamtek] to Missouri.”

He’s not the only Governor caught up in the game of “the buck stops there”. Former Governor Holden, who is now the chairman of the Midwest US-China Association (that spearheaded the Mamtek deal), also attempted to distance himself by recently proclaiming:

“I don’t have the staff to go in and do all the due diligence. That would take a considerable amount of money with not a good rate of return.”

Well that’s comforting coming from the head of the group that made the big push for this deal in the first place. In fact, it sums up the result of the deal quite well: no due diligence, a considerable amount of money and no rate of return.

But it doesn’t hold up to statements about Governor Holden’s involvement prior to the deal’s death spiral. Mamtek’s former CEO Bruce Cole said that Holden:

“…played a key leadership role in influencing Mamtek to locate in the Midwest. Governor Holden was a very effective advocate. As a result, we will be locating in Moberly.”

The Moberly Area Economic Development Corp. also singled Holden’s “leadership” out:

“We appreciate MWCA, and in particular the efforts of Governor Holden…”

Also, as the deal was being put together, Governor Holden wrote to Mamtek CEO Cole, offering thanks for the opportunity to market the project to Moberly.

Not to be outdone, the Dept. of Economic Development’s top dog David Kerr threw his “not me” hat into the ring, claiming:

“I don’t believe this was a project that we identified. It was a project that the city brought to us. I would have to go back and research this, but we got to the process later in the process.”

Turns out he really should’ve gone back and researched this first. The DED later admitted (albeit through a spokesman) that they actually did market the project first, claiming that Kerr was “caught off-guard” by the question.

When you’ve got two governors and the head of the DED backtracking, trying to invent a la-la land where they are in no way culpable for this horrible deal, you know the state of affairs in the state of Missouri is a real cluster... well, basically it’s a mess.

There’s a lot more to this $60 million dollar scandal, from immigration scams to what the Governor knew and when, and we’ll be getting into that next week. (Props to Rudi Keller for a massive amount of info here.)

Until then, enjoy the irony of a scandal that begs the question “What did Nixon know and when did he know it?”

October 12, 2011

Take the time to read this article by Jack Cashill, from American Thinker.

Great analysis of the Republican Presidential Debates - where the candidates went right, where they went wrong, and how they should be handling the spotlight.

Here's a sample:

What I have learned in working Republican debates are some tactical guides that might best be summarized in the acronym CLAPS (or, for the more aggressive candidate, SCALP). The C comes first. The candidate should, above all, voice conservative values consistently and coherently. That is lots of Cs, actually, but all are important.

The L and the A may seem superficial, but they are essential nonetheless. The candidate should be likeable and attractive. These are especially important variables in a televised debate, where, as the Nixon-Kennedy debates first proved, medium often trumps message.

The P stands for "positive" and the S for "smart." Although nature dictates some distinctions, especially in the S and A categories, there is much candidates can do to improve their chances.

If it were not for the C factor, this would already be a two-man race, but it is not.

As the “Occupy Whatever-City-You’re-In” protests spread across the country they have been shown to have a cadre of different causes that have come out, as per usual, to ride the coattails of any movement and promote their own causes.

In Kansas City, for example, one of those causes is marijuana legalization. And they aren’t just participating, they’re organizing. Tony over at Tony’s KC did some digging into the organization’s web domain and found some interesting information about who is behind this incarnation of the protests:

Part of the group’s social media leadership are connected to NORML (weed) protesters.

(UPDATE: Tony's right on the money. The website for OccupyKC is registered to a Kyle Norton. Kyle Norton is the also the Executive Director of JoCo NORML, the local chapter of the national marijuana advocacy organization.)

It’s an interesting partnership for such an anti-capitalist group of protesters, especially considering that the end game for NORML is the widespread legalization of cannabis, which would create a nationwide capitalist enterprise that would likely be one of the largest industries in the country; not to mention the libertarian leanings of the group compared to the socialist and communist messages of the “Occupy” protesters is confounding. (There’s a joke in there about Jay Nixon’s son, but we’ll skip that and get to the good stuff.)

Drugs having a part in these collections of neo-hippies and mad-libs should come as no surprise. These protests are offshoots of the original “Occupy Wall Street” mess in New York City, and behavior there is out of control. From the Daily Mail:

Among the banners and flags are now discarded packets of condoms, cigarettes and bottles of spirits, while naked youngsters happily get together with just sleeping bags covering their modesty.

A box of free condoms is kept in the main area where protesters are camping. In one shocking picture, a man can be seen defecating on a police car.

Elsewhere we found piles of stinking refuse clogging Zuccotti Park and the stench of marijuana…

Wanted for burglary, [a] drug-addled fugitive said some of his hard-partying pals clued him in that the protest was a good place to be fed, get wasted and crash.

“I’ve been smoking and drinking in here for eight days now,” said Dave, booze on his breath and his eyes bloodshot as he lay sprawled on a tattered sheet of cardboard. “I need to get some methadone. Every day, I wake up, and I’m f--ked up.”

Drugs can be easy to score -- a Post reporter was offered pot for $15 and heroin for $10.

In addition to the drug-fueled rave-like romps at these events, there were plenty of ironic situations in New York and Missouri alike: like multi-millionaires Kanye West (in gold chains), Russell Simmons, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, and Mark Ruffalo taking to the streets against, apparently, themselves; or the leftie KC paper The Pitch taking issue with the “End the Fed” signs on display; or Tony’s KC revealing the union power-grab emerging behind the scenes; or the conservative blogger in St. Louis who, while covering the event for his blog, was verbally attacked by a left-winger who screamed that the writer was a “faggot”. (Because you’re only a bigot if you’re not on the Left.)

These protests are, as intended, beginning to tear the country apart. But hey, at least they’ve got the drugs to make it manageable, right?

October 07, 2011

As news organizations have been reporting, the “Occupy Wall Street” protests have spread to most major cities around the country. Ten protestors were arrested this week in St. Louis in addition to the 700 arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge.

But the media has completely ignored the ‘analysis’ part of their job as they rush to report on this super-important issue, one so important that it brought out “dozens” of protestors in St. Louis. That’s right, dozens! (In other words, a few more than a Sunday matinee and a few less than an eighth grade dance. Or “teeming masses” as the media would lead you to believe.)

What they’re failing to report on is the utter ridiculousness of the whole situation. These “anti-capitalist” protestors, angry at the world because they feel they should’ve been dealt a better hand, are just as much consumers as the rest of us. They didn’t ride a horse from their shack in the forest to protest.

Quite the contrary: they organized by Twitter and Facebook (companies) with computers and cell phones and iPads (purchased from companies who sell them for companies) and then went to an art supply store (aka a company) to by supplies to make their signs (from marker and paint companies, paper companies, and various other companies) so they could march to their little protest areas in their brand-name clothes listening to their hipster music (both from companies) to protest against… well… companies.

And then they wonder why anyone would argue with them, let alone not like them.

I guess their lesson is that you’re only a capitalist pig if you produce the goods, not if you’re a consumer of the goods.

That the media continues to report favorably on these protests is more than a little infuriating. These cretins are a micro-minority of this country – no larger than the Christian fundamentalist crowd we collectively ignore – and yet these neo-hippies are media darlings.

(The media even ignores the Tea Party for God’s sake, and they make up a huge chunk of the American population.)

And that’s all not to mention that these rallies have been organized by Obama’s disgraced former Green Czar (and communist) Van Jones through the criminally disgraced political group MORE… although you may better know them as ACORN. (New name, same BS.) Van Jones calls the movement the "American Fall", and it has nothing to do with autumn.

It’s impossible to understand the rhetoric they represent, but mostly because they have no understanding of the world, the economy, work, politics, history, or themselves.

These are predominately upper-middle class twenty-something white kids still trying to piss off their parents; “kids” who haven’t known a life outside of protesting since college, bitching and moaning about anything and everything in the name of their communist and socialist and anarchist causes that they collectively call “progressivism” while they suckle from the government teat. They don’t have jobs – this is their job. And we pay them for it.

The overwhelming majority of these know-nothings screaming about unemployment and the evil capitalist system have never taken part in the system (aside from their hypocritical participation in it) and therefore cannot understand it (not unlike the president). What the protesters have taken part in is living in a world where the government will provide for them at the expense of the upper class, and now they want more. And where do they turn? They set their sights on the upper class yet again, demanding more money to make their lives better; “occupying” cities to demand that the government take from the most productive Americans and give to them in their quest for more, more, more.

They engage in this class warfare, and when the upper class pushes back the protestors accuse them of waging class warfare against the poor. (It’s the ultimate politically-correct shell game.)

And, rich or not, if you disagree with them in any way they refuse to argue (mostly because they can’t) and instead brand you a racist or a bigot or a misogynist or one of many other epithets to distract from the simple fact that they don’t have a single logical defense for their behavior in the first place. (Because thirty seconds of stammering doesn’t win many intellectual debates.)

In a country under socialism or communism we all would be lucky to have three things: food, clothing, and shelter. And that’s about it... maybe a goat.

We would stop inventions, technological innovations, medical breakthroughs, individualism, the pursuit of happiness, and most importantly free will, among other things. We would stop the future from happening. We would devolve. And only people this patently crazy could stand for that.

Despite what the press would lead you to believe, progressives stand in the way of our country making the next great leap forward.

True Americans are the last great hope for the United States, and they must stand up to save the remnants of the system before it’s picked clean.

October 06, 2011

After weeks of information dripping out about the Moberly and Kirksville projects-turned-disasters, it seems the Missouri legislature has determined it’s time to do a little digging of their own.

A state senate investigation has been launched into two high-profile economic development projects that have fallen flat. Senate governmental accountability committee chairman Jim Lembke expects his committee to follow an extensive paper trail on the projects, Mamtek in Moberly and Wi-Fi Sensors in Kirksville.

And they’re not the only ones. In the Moberly case:

The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Missouri Attorney General are investigating.

With the China Hub a hot topic for debate this year it’s vitally important to air all this out and get to the bottom of it, so it’s a good thing that the senate is investigating, even if it is bound to be a pie-in-the-face situation for the state.

One thing you can count on: Governor Nixon, despite spearheading both projects by appearing at on-site press conferences in both cases, will distance himself as far from this scandal as possible.

Which is why you must remember this picture when that inevitably happens:

As far as the investigation, we’ll give them something to talk about next week. Check back soon.